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Anchor Marco Werman speaks with reporter Sheri Fink about the efforts to provide medical care for the thousands of injured still in need of surgical treatment a week after the earthquake.

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MARCO WERMAN: Reporter Sheri Fink is a doctor as well as a journalist.  She’s in Haiti to report on the medical assistance being offered to the wounded on shore.  We caught up with her today at an emergency hospital being run by doctors from the University of Miami.    She said the situation for many patients is dire.

SHERI FINK: The situation of some of the patients is quite bad because they’ve been here with severe injuries for number days, and they hadn’t been getting the surgical care that they needed at first. So a lot of these wounds are the injuries that they that had became infected, and this is requiring them to now start doing some amputations.  Unfortunately, a lot of the patients here were not moved to places where they were doing surgery quick enough to avoid some of those complications.

WERMAN: And what are you hearing from the medical teams that are already there about the situation like in this hospital run by you said the University of Miami?

FINK: Yeah, this is one hospital.  I’ve spoken with doctors from a number of places, Harvard, the Inova Health System.  And what I’m hearing just in general is that there are lots and lots of doctors and nurses here in country, and some of them are even confused about where they can make a difference.  There is still need here, but there are an overwhelming number of volunteers, and now the issue is kind of trying to coordinate them and figure out where they can do some good.  The other thing is that it’s been really frustrating to the doctors who’ve been here to know that there are people that they can’t help because they just don’t have the right equipment. And that equipment has been on its way for days now.

I’m sure it is starting to arrive, but like I said in the meantime people have died, people have developed very severe complications. One of the things I asked them was could these patients have been medevaced somewhere else such as the U.S. where all of these teams are coming in from. And what I heard when I came into the airport today from the U.S. Customs officials was that the only people that they’re letting out in general, I should say, and there have been exceptions, are U.S. citizens.  So Haitians who are U.S. citizens.  So as far as I understand it, there have not been a lot of these really very sick or injured patients been able to go out of Haiti to other areas where they could get more definitive care earlier, and avoid some of the complications that they’ve developed.

WERMAN: Sheri, what kind of equipment are we talking about, the kinds of things that would have saved some lives in the last few days?

FINK: I think in a lot of cases it’s been equipment to be able to do surgeries. So there are a lot of surgeons here, and it’s funny. I just asked the Inova health team. They went to Jacquemel yesterday to help out with some surgeries. And I said, “Is there anything that you’re missing that you really needed?”  And they just laughed at me.  So I guess that’s just an indication of the fact that the conditions are very rudimentary, and I’m sure that they probably were to some extent as we know even before this. But now suddenly you’ve got all these people needing surgeries. And the doctors who are coming from the U.S. are not used to doing surgery under Ketamine. It’s something that’s used a lot in war zones, but they aren’t used to doing surgery without …

WERMAN: Ketamine is a kind of anesthetic that knocks you out during an operation, right?

FINK: I’m sorry, yes.  Ketamine is a kind of anesthetic, and what I understand is that this little hospital where I am now they amputated, you know, because some of the patients became very critical because they didn’t have that early care that they needed, they’ve ended up starting to do some emergency amputations. And as recently as several days ago, they did that on a child without any anesthesia, and that’s just horrifying to think about.

WERMAN: We’ve been hearing that tons, literally tons of medical supplies have been arriving in Haiti for the last week, but to hear you say that some children have undergone amputation without anesthetic of any kind is just shocking.  Why aren’t those medical supplies getting to the people who need them most?

FINK: I think that that’s just starting to happen.  I think that there was just a lot of disorganization at first, and people setting up clinics in various sites and not really knowing what was available elsewhere.  And then the people who were bringing in supplies not necessarily knowing where those needed to go. I don’t know exactly.  I think a lot of it is coordination and it might be just not having worked under these conditions before.  The groups that are here aren’t aware of the fact that there are some coordination meetings going on, and ways to find out about where they could get supplies or where pieces could be moved to who need the types of care that they can’t get at one particular clinic.

WERMAN: Reporter Sheri Fink in Port au Prince.  I greatly appreciate your time, Sheri.  Thank you.

FINK: Thanks.

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